apples from seed

purpz

purpz

Well-Known Member
Hey peeps,

I've been wanting to grow some apple trees from seed. Yes, I know that the apple wont be anything like the original apple. I know you need at least two different strains in order for them to cross pollinate each other.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

I was planing on growing ralls janets and maybe granny smith's, but wanted to see if anyone here knew a thing or two about going the johnny apple seed route.:joint:
 
AimAim

AimAim

Well-Known Member
All commercial varieties of apples are grafted. You will have poor results trying to grow from seed.
 
edyah

edyah

Well-Known Member
aimaim for the benefit of the readers, can you explain what grafted means in context to the ops question ? Thanks.
 
purpz

purpz

Well-Known Member
yea, I know that most comercial verities are usually grafted to dwarf apple tree root stocks to strengthin the graft from diseases and to also keep them short trees.
 
ricky1lung

ricky1lung

Well-Known Member
Of course you can grow them from seed but they will take a long
time to establish and years to produce fruit.

You can always get some seedlings instead (will still take a long time but they are already started)

But growing them and seeing them every year is also nice.

Im working on some amur maples from seed, 3 month germ after
stratification, but if I can get them to take I will be happy having
some extra color in the yard.
 
purpz

purpz

Well-Known Member
yup, usually takes about 7-10 years for fruit, but i got the patience.

I also got a few plum cherry saplings going & I also got a few sugar maple tree seeds 2 months into germinating.
 
ricky1lung

ricky1lung

Well-Known Member
Nice tree Purpz (sugar maple) they look nice in the fall.





The ones Im after are similar in color in the fall.

Amur maple




I have been working on a single hole par 3 golf course in my yard over the past couple of years and wanted to add some color
to the yard. I planted a row of willows for privacy on one side of the yard and 100 spruce on the other.
Seeded an acre and a half of new grass, so it is definitely a work in progress.

I have some switch grass seeds that Im going to plant around the very out side for some blending ground color (and bedding for the deer)and want to add
the maples into the already established tree line for the nice fall colors.

We have a plum tree that is established but not growing anything but thorns that really cut into
you when cutting the grass....lol

Have fun! It is allot of work, but very rewarding when you finally have that chance to sit back and
take a look around at all of the additions.
 
diet coke

diet coke

Active Member
Took me 20 seed from apples , I only got 1 to sprout.

I did read where apples from seed dont produce the same strain and could be just about anything in the apple family.
 
AimAim

AimAim

Well-Known Member
edyah said:
aimaim for the benefit of the readers, can you explain what grafted means in context to the ops question ? Thanks.
Click to expand...
It means that commercially grown, nice big tasteful apples are always from grafted trees. They use a rootstock that provides characteristics of a tough, disease resistant, cold hardy tree, and the rootstock contributes about 90% to what size the tree will end up being at maturity. The scion wood provides flowering timing, yield, and most of the aspects of actually producing the finished fruit. Years ago the common rootstock was the quince tree. Today there are a couple dozen genetic strains of rootstock used for grafting. Planting a seed from an apple will result in a weak stunted tree that will not carry forward any of the desirable characteristics provided by the rootstock of a good apple tree. It will produce fruit, in small amounts, of lesser quality.
 
azryda420

azryda420

Active Member
diet coke said:
Took me 20 seed from apples , I only got 1 to sprout.

I did read where apples from seed dont produce the same strain and could be just about anything in the apple family.
Click to expand...
I read that about citrus too. Something to do with the pollen that made the fruit.

And instead of growing an apple tree from seed.

Why not buy a tree from a nursery? This will eliminate the "watching paint dry" experience of a seed taking years to give fruit.
 
purpz

purpz

Well-Known Member
yea i think I'm going to just get a couple apple trees already grafted. sounds like it's pretty impossible to come up with a keeper from seed. If i only had more space I would. O well, now i get to try all kinds of different apples find the two i love best that grow well around here. Fuji is already @ the top of my list, I know it does well over here.



Thanks for all the replies
 
azryda420

azryda420

Active Member
You should research which apples grow best out here. Some don't do well. And just so you know, "grafted" means it was grown from a clone pretty much. I know this method is used because they want plants to not carry disease which can ruin other trees. I read back in the 70's meyer lemons trees in California were ordered destroyed because they all came from a mother tree that was secretly carrying some disease. So meyer lemons were very scarce until a man from the bay area found a version that did not contain the disease. That cutting is where almost all meyer lemon trees came from today. Almost like millions and millions of clones. It's crazy.

My friend has a huge orchard of fruit trees. They didn't like one type of peach tree. It made soft peaches that went to mush too fast. So.... they cut those trees down to stumps pretty much and cut branches off of another type of peach and inserted them into the stumps of the trees that were removed. The tree becomes whatever you stuck in the stump. Genetically, the tree has the stump of one strain and branches bearing fruit from another type. It's crazy. This can be done for many types of fruit. I want a "rainbow" apple tree. One that has all different types of apples. I wonder how nature would feel about that though.
 
Apomixis

Apomixis

Active Member
azryda420 said:
You should research which apples grow best out here. Some don't do well. And just so you know, "grafted" means it was grown from a clone pretty much. I know this method is used because they want plants to not carry disease which can ruin other trees. I read back in the 70's meyer lemons trees in California were ordered destroyed because they all came from a mother tree that was secretly carrying some disease. So meyer lemons were very scarce until a man from the bay area found a version that did not contain the disease. That cutting is where almost all meyer lemon trees came from today. Almost like millions and millions of clones. It's crazy.

My friend has a huge orchard of fruit trees. They didn't like one type of peach tree. It made soft peaches that went to mush too fast. So.... they cut those trees down to stumps pretty much and cut branches off of another type of peach and inserted them into the stumps of the trees that were removed. The tree becomes whatever you stuck in the stump. Genetically, the tree has the stump of one strain and branches bearing fruit from another type. It's crazy. This can be done for many types of fruit. I want a "rainbow" apple tree. One that has all different types of apples. I wonder how nature would feel about that though.
Click to expand...
In my experience, plants with multiple grafts do not live as long as those with one or none. They split much easier, get disease a bit quicker. Not saying you shouldn't do it.. I think it would be cool cool cool.
 
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